


Good Day Bad Day

by joosetta



Category: Inception
Genre: Humor, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-17
Updated: 2011-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joosetta/pseuds/joosetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is having a bad day. Was having a bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Day Bad Day

Ariadne has never seen Arthur like this. One shirt cuff is undone, he’s turning the warehouse upside down with vicious, thorough aggression. She almost considers asking him what he is looking for, but his mouth has a down-turned, bitten-in fury to it that doesn’t invite conversation. She wanders over to her desk and pretends to work, watching him from between the paper towers of a model she is building.

After a further ten minutes, he finds what he is looking for, the lens cap for his camera, then he storms out of the warehouse without any sort of goodbye.

He comes back two minutes later, stamping his shoes on the concrete floor, snatches his jacket from the chair - jangling with keys - then rushes back out. Distantly, Ariadne hears the outside door slam.

She works for a while, glad of the calm. Yusuf has taken his work elsewhere; somewhere with the right size of centrifuge or a special oven or something, and so she doesn’t have to deal with his music - which he plays overloud into sennheisers, making an irritating buzz that floats all the way across the warehouse. After perhaps an hour, Arthur comes back, the door clattering behind him.

He throws his keys on the table so hard they skitter off the other side and he has to stamp round, pick them up and smack them down again. Ariadne makes a cautious attempt at eye contact, but his glare slides right over her. Arthur seems to storm around doing nothing- just lifting things and replacing them for no discernible reason. When he slams a cupboard door, Ariadne almost breaks the tip of one of her fineliners in shock.

The next hour, Arthur spends tinkering with the PASIV, doing something quite horrifying to the guts of it, dragging yards and yards of translucent IV out with gloved hands, and frowning down at the fragile pumps and membranes within. After that he types angrily on the computer, makes one phone call in curt Italian, then paces, staring at a fixed point on the wall. Ariadne is at a loss for what to do. She has done no work - Arthur’s behaviour is far too alarming. She stops even pretending, instead just sitting and watching him as he strides around the warehouse like a caged tiger.

It’s nearly five when Eames saunters in, hands shoved into his winter coat, whistling tunelessly. He begins to smile in greeting, then spots Arthur, who abruptly stops pacing and glares at Eames instead. For a heartbeat, Ariadne thinks they might start a physical fight.

Then Eames turns and leaves without a word, and Ariadne wonders if this is a dream, or maybe an elaborate sort of hazing. It’s been almost two years since they first worked together, but anything is possible. Arthur starts to pace again.

It takes Eames twenty minutes to get back, and when he jogs in, he looks a little out of breath.

“Look what I got,” he says to the room, depositing a brown paper bag on the table, right next to Arthur’s keys. Arthur barely looks up, but that doesn’t bother Eames, who seems completely satisfied - tossing his coat over a chair and sauntering over to Ariadne, who is still cowering behind her model. She has been creasing the same piece of paper for about 4 hours.

“Hello,” Eames slips into the seat in front of Ariadne, so that his face is framed between the two paper towers. He winks, and murmurs under his breath, “wait for it.”

Sure enough, Arthur slowly wanders over to the table, where he investigates the paper bag. He takes out a cup of coffee, then a pastry, wrapped in greasy paper. He seems to smell it, then rubs his fingers over his lips. He takes a mouthful of coffee, then very calmly, does up the cuff of his shirt.

“You’re magic,” Ariadne accuses Eames, quietly, as Arthur smoothly returns to his computer, coffee in hand, all tension gone. “You’re a wizard.”

Eames just waggles his eyebrows and starts to quiz her on the maze.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed. posted 01/09/2010


End file.
